Clinical innovation
“How can we help you?” Positive relationships with commissioners
With services and commissioners adapting to changing policy, it’s a key time for specialist care providers to reassess their relationships with the NHS to meet shared objectives, writes Ben Payne.
It’s now over a year since the government released its 10 Year Plan for the NHS in England. One of the three major shifts it proposed was for healthcare to move from hospital to community. Care operators already meet the clinical needs of residents, many of whom would otherwise be living on a hospital ward, and the specialist sector has a particularly key role to play.
A co-ordinated service The 10 Year Plan reframes the ‘hospital- centric’ NHS as the ‘neighbourhood health service’, emphasising the shift into community-led services that enable hospitals to focus on critical care for those who need it. The care sector is familiar with many instances where people who could be discharged into its services, for whatever reason, end up stuck in hospital at greater expense and often detriment to their health, mobility and social wellbeing.
Meanwhile, the boundaries of Integrated
Care Boards are being re-drawn to bring them into line with strategic authority borders. This time of change and reassessment is an opportunity for providers to re-engage with commissioners and demonstrate how they provide an environment that meets the needs of an individual, that the necessary clinical skills are in place and that a move to their setting represents value for money and an expected improvement in that person’s wellbeing.
Meeting the need The starting point is understanding what commissioners need from specialist care services. They have patients they want to find a suitable setting for, but budgets will always be a primary concern. What we as providers need to show is equity justification – that the costs are due to a highly skilled team and a quality of care.
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www.thecarehomeenvironment.com November 2026
Commissioners need to see that the level of expertise required is there and specialist care homes may have an advantage in this respect because the staff team is uniquely qualified to support the most complex cases. As one commissioner put it, “homes can
add more staff, but it is the level of expertise that providers bring, that is what we are paying for”.
The power of partnerships In our experience, complex care is not something we provide in isolation. We see great value in working in partnership with colleagues in the NHS to deliver the very best outcomes for our complex care patients. For example, while patients receive excellent day-to-day care from our nursing team, staff keep in regular contact with consultants at nearby NHS services. Even for those patients needing tracheostomy and ventilation care, which we are specialists
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